I remember looking outside my bedroom window back home, watching the rain pouring down from the skies and clogging all arteries of the city. Once the downpour stopped, the skies would open up, the water would give lots of trouble to all commuters trying to get back home but the skies would open up, the clouds would go away, and clear blue skies would appear out of nowhere.
I remember perfect blue skies in winter and autumn days in Ireland, when we were using so many layers of clothing that we looked (and walked) like mummies, and when we looked to the skies we would see faint white lines of the trails of hot air created by airplanes flying over our neighborhood. Like a pencil line drawn by an invisible hand.
We had many days with gray skies; however, every single day of blue skies was cherished and celebrated.
I remember my last trip before coming to Dubai, I went to Mato Grosso visit one of my mom’s brothers… and endless acres of land producing several tons of corn, soy and cotton stretched as far as the eye could see, all the way to the horizon, and the hot spring day light giving a yellow tint to the sundown.
Every single morning we were saluted with blue skies once we woke up.
I remember running through fresh worked earth with Bella, the Berg-Heuer dog, and throwing wood sticks so it could run in the fields of oil producing yellow flowers.
The land was covered of green buds with tiny dots of yellow and the blue skies covered us all like a blanket.
I remember going by minibus by the roads of Tours and environs… going from castle by castle in the Loire Valley listening to the song “ This is the Love Generation” …. Green fields with wild red flowers on each side of the road, and blue skies over us.
Dubai for some reason has no blue skies. It reaches a light blue hue on the end of the afternoon when the sand produced by construction and sandstorms in the desert settles down. Otherwise, in specifically bad days you have very limited visibility, and you can barely see the car in front of you – that’s why they had that extremely bad accident a couple of months ago in the Abu Dhabi – Dubai highway.
It has a whitewashed quality, as the product of leftovers of an oil painter. When you are painting an oil canvas, if you mix all colors you have you will get a pale colored mixture. It is not pure white, but does not have any specific characteristic you might say it is that color or this color. It is just pale.
It is very similar to the fog we had in Lisbon last year, when I was stuck on ground for what, four hours waiting for the permission to take off.
It is like the blindness described by Jose Saramago in his book Ensaio sobre a Cegueira.
It is pale white.
Everywhere.
